Socioecological System Transformation: Lessons from COVID-19

Abstract

Environmentalists have long warned of a coming shock to the system. COVID-19 exposed fragility in the system and has the potential to result in radical social change. With socioeconomic interruptions cascading through tightly intertwined economic, social, environmental, and political systems, many are not working to find the opportunities for change. Prefigurative politics in communities have demonstrated rapid and successful responses to the pandemic. These successes, and others throughout history, demonstrate that prefigurative politics are important for response to crisis. Given the failure of mainstream environmentalism, we use systemic transformation literature to suggest novel strategies to strengthen cooperative prefigurative politics. In this paper, we look at ways in which COVID-19 shock is leveraged in local and global economic contexts. We also explore how the pandemic has exposed paradoxes of global connectivity and interdependence. While responses shed light on potential lessons for ecological sustainability governance, COVID-19 has also demonstrated the importance of local resilience strategies. We use local manufacturing as an example of a possible localized, yet globally connected, resilience strategy and explore some preliminary data that highlight possible tradeoffs of economic contraction.

Globalization, Inequality, Environmental Damage and the Corona Pandemic - Lessons for Economic, Environmental and Social Policy

“…By increasing intra-and intergenerational inequality, climate change and its effects will not only decrease the welfare of the current generation but also affect the welfare of future generations. Along with increasing local and global inequality, the outbreak and rapid spread of the corona virus has led many scientists to question current policies as they face the need for a sustainable development policy [13][14][15][16][17] to be better prepared for infectious diseases in the future and more able to react to environmental damage, inequality and their effects. While facing up to the current health crisis, society has experienced the limits of globalization.…”

“…Likewise, the human-made effects of a growing economic system on climate, biodiversity, air quality, and other environmental parameters as well as water and food security, inequality and justice, have recently posed a threat to long-term human health [21][22][23][24][25]. It is therefore not surprising that more and more researchers see a connection between the corona pandemic, globalization, growth and its effects [13,19,21,[26][27] and ask the question what form sustainable transformation could take.…”

“…However, these are accompanied by the movement of emissions and environmental externalities that arise on a national level to become a global, or at least nationwide, problem. There is no doubt that globalization has contributed to wealth creation through free markets, vaccination programs, infrastructure development, water provision and the increase in public health systems in many areas of developing countries, including China and India [13]. However, the same process has also led to ecological destruction, not only in terms of climate change, but also in pollution and the destruction of biodiversity and habitat [19].…”

“…For the pandemic has taught us that in times of border closings and economic lockdowns, entire supply chains can break down. As a result, essential goods, such as medication and suitable protective clothing for nursing staff in the health crisis, may no longer be available [13,[26][27], or basic foodstuffs may be undersupplied [28]. While widespread globalized production is often cheaper and more efficient, it carries the higher risk that essential goods will no longer be available in times of crisis.…”

“…The discussion around a universal basic income is thus becoming more forceful as it puts forward a possible solution to the inequality problem, especially now, in a time of crisis [13,[97][98][99]. This has been demonstrated, for example, by the introduction, from June 2020, of a variant of basic income for the poorest in Spain in response to the social effects of the Corona pandemic measures [100].…”